Stephen Colbert Found the Only Person Excited for Obamacare Repeal: The Grim Reaper

On Tuesday night, Stephen Colbert re-united with an old friend from his days on Comedy Central—the Grim Reaper. As the Late Show host tore into the G.O.P.’s proposed replacement for the Affordable Care Act, he worked in a brief cameo that will presumably be O.K. with Comedy Central’s legal department.

“Experts estimate this will cover 20 million fewer Americans than Obamacare,” Colbert said. “Pretty rough—20 million fewer than Obama. That sounds like Trump’s inauguration. . . . The point is, 20 million is a lot of people without health insurance. I don’t know anybody who could be happy about that.”

It was then that Grimmy crashed the stage to dance in celebration of his good luck. Though Colbert did not mention his old Colbert Report segment “Cheating Death” by name, for longtime viewers, the reference to his old, farcical public-health campaign was clear.

Colbert is still riding a ratings high, now enjoying his fifth consecutive week as late night’s ratings winner in total viewers. His success is allegedly pressuringJimmy Fallon, whose Tonight Show is on repeats this week, to pump up the politics.

But Colbert wasn’t the only one knocking the G.O.P.’s answer to health care on Tuesday; right after Colbert, James Corden took his own shots at the plan, saying, “This bill gets rid of one of the signature aspects of Obamacare: the individual mandate. Republicans only wanted to get rid of it because they thought ‘Individual Man Date’ was a gay reality-TV show.” Corden also knocked Jason Chaffetz’s comment that low-income families should consider investing in health care instead of buying iPhones, noting that “just like a Samsung Galaxy 7, that comment blew up in his face.”

“Hey Jason,” Corden continued, “a phone isn’t supposed to literally cost you an arm and a leg, O.K.? I mean, his comment was cold. Even Siri was like, ‘Are you not a human being?’ “

Meanwhile, on ABC, Jimmy Kimmel had a similarly tough time processing Chaffetz’s comment, quipping, “But if I give up my phone to buy health insurance, how will I call 911?” Still, he came up with an ad that might help the G.O.P. sell the idea. Or, well, maybe not. (The ad begins at the 1:35 mark in the video below.)